The simultaneous study of the temporal dynamics of foraging behaviour, diet and seed abundance is essential to assess the way in which resources affect the behaviour and ecology of harvester ants. Here, we evaluate how fluctuations in grass seed abundance during three consecutive growing seasons influenced the foraging behaviour and diet of the harvester ants Pogonomyrmex rastratus, P. mendozan...

Keen-Rhinehart E, Bartness TJ. Leptin inhibits food-deprivation-induced increases in food intake and food hoarding. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 295: R1737–R1746, 2008. First published October 1, 2008; doi:10.1152/ajpregu.90512.2008.—Food deprivation stimulates foraging and hoarding and to a much lesser extent, food intake in Siberian hamsters. Leptin, the anorexigenic hormone secrete...

—Birds are known tomodify their foraging behavior in relation to food availability. Once understood, these relationships can be used to draw inferences about relative food availability and habitat quality. We measured foraging behavior of Surf Scoters (Melanitta perspicillata) andWhite-winged Scoters (M. fusca) feeding on clams during winter in the Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, to evalua...

While foraging models of terrestrial mammals are concerned primarily with optimizing time/energy budgets, models of foraging behaviour in marine mammals have been primarily concerned with physiological constraints. This has historically centred on calculations of aerobic dive limits. However, other physiological limits are key to forming foraging behaviour, including digestive limitations to fo...

Plants are adept at assessing and responding to nutrients in soil, and generally proliferate roots into nutrient-rich patches. An analogy between this growth response and animal foraging movement is often drawn, but because of differences between plants and animals it has not always been clear how to directly apply existing foraging theory to plants. Here we suggest one way to unite pre-existin...

We present in this paper an approach to Web information foraging. We implemented a technique that helps Web users undertaking information foraging by simulating their behavior using a colony of artificial ants. Experiments were conducted on a website dedicated to the domain of Health. The results are promising and show the ability of our Web information foraging approach to find relevant Web pa...

BACKGROUND To meet the minimum energetic requirements needed to support parents and their provisioned offspring, the timing of breeding in birds typically coincides with periods of high food abundance. Seasonality and synchrony of the reproductive cycle is especially important for marine species that breed in high latitudes with seasonal booms in ocean productivity. Laysan and black-footed alba...